On two Sundays in a row (11th and 18th Oct 2009) the pastor of the church we were attending was trying to persuade the congregation to participate with London Citizens (a coalition of faith (including Muslims & Roman Catholics) and non-faith organisations involved in social action). He expressed sadness about the way we viewed Roman Catholics and Muslims, but he did not add any warning or caveats. (When he had first asked me to participate with LC I had prayed about it and the Lord had said to me “right issues but wrong forum” and raised questions for me about being unequally yoked).
I wrote to the pastor expressing my concern about the questionable alignments he was asking the congregation to make. He responded by saying that if I had attended London Citizens he was sure “I would recognize Christ IN the midst of a gathering made up of believers, unbelievers and everything in between …. and recognize Christ IN friend and foe”
I responded by quoting the following scriptures (Mat 18:20, Rev 3:20 and 2 Cor 5:17) which provide (for me) the basis for being “in Christ” and suggested that his take had more resonance with a “New Age” Christ and the views of some RC mystics.
He came round to see me and was very upset that I had predicated my views (and challenged his views) on the basis of Scripture. Because he was unable to bring me round to his views of LC by persuasion he began to question if my views were predicated on some psycho-emotional condition he imagined I was suffering from. He asked me if his wife had seen me “about my emotional problems”! He then stormed out.
(In reality the Lord had asked me to use less nuanced language and my concerns had no psycho-emotional basis but were expressed out of obedience to the Lord – I was being a mouthpiece)